Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Maureen: [00:00:00] Today our guest is Subhanu Saxena, who is the managing partner at the New Ryan Healthcare. We’re gonna talk about leaders who seek to create mindful organizations and how they do this. Subhanu, thank you so much for joining us.

What’s the most important leadership topic at this particular point in history?

Subhanu: One of the most important topics and agenda items for leaders is how do we create and build leaders who can unite diverse groups of people around a common purpose and a purpose that goes beyond the numbers, beyond profit, and gets us back to some of the core principles that great leaders have espoused over generations.

That businesses a force for good in society, great leaders unite. They do not divide. And so how do we. Cultivate a new generation of integrative inclusive leaders that orient what we do to also have a positive impact in the societies they [00:01:00] operate.

Maureen: So do you have a solution to that?

Subhanu: So I’m not sure if I have a solution to that, but one of the principles from the ancient wisdom of the East is to start by really knowing yourself before you can know and help others.

And there’s a verse in the DU language which says. Before you meet other people in this world, know the person inside. And what it gets to is the power of introspection and the ability to be more contemplative. We live in a world where we’re judged by outer actions, but if they’re not informed by inner awareness, often that’s what causes some of the issues we see in society.

And therefore, giving people the ability to introspect. I had a, my old vice chairman would say, you have to be liberated. You have to be very self-aware of what makes you successful and where your blind spots are which allows you to be a more humble, authentic leader in many ways. And the ability to be vulnerable, I think is a very important quality in leadership.[00:02:00]

Maureen: So I assume you meditate.

Yes.

 There are some people who are concerned that this may be some weird thing that they can’t do.

Subhanu: One of the most important lessons in life is to be able to show up in your relationships in the workplace.

What does that mean is to be fully present. And we had experience where you are in a meeting with somebody for checking their phone or if they’re distracted, they’re not really with you in the room. And that’s a fatal flaw in a leader. But those who’ve been with fully present leaders feel inspired, challenged, and engaged.

And mindfulness practices are very much just about giving you the greatest gift you can, which is time with yourself. And to be fully conscious of what does it mean to be in the moment, be fully present, fully aware. And imagine the energy that. You take from that in every interaction with those around you, if you’re able to bring that to everything you do.

And I think one of the [00:03:00] again the greatest teachings from the ancient traditions is if you can turn every act into one where you are fully aware and present in the moment and you lose yourself in the moment, it unlocks an energy that really connects with others and makes you more impactful in everything you do.

I don’t think people should see this as something outside of themselves. This is something that you all have had experience with. If you’ve listened to a quiet piece of music, you’ve been able to lose yourself. When you go for a walk, you have these moments of just being in the moment of the beauty of nature.

Take that energy you felt and bring into everything you do. It’s not rocket science. And the point about these mindfulness techniques is not to somehow. I say I got to control the mind. It’s about just being aware of where you are at any moment in time and wherever the mind goes, be aware it’s going somewhere, and then like children playing in the park, you quietly shepherd it back, but you let it play and you are just aware of that and that inculcates over [00:04:00] time, a discipline and a practice that you can bring the mind.

To where you want it to be. And as Matthew Ricard has said, the Buddhist monk who works with the Dalai Lama is we spend our life training our bodies in the gym. How much time do we spend mind training?

Maureen: In my classes, I call it weightlifting For the brain.

Subhanu: Yeah. Mind training.

That’s what we talk about.

Maureen: We don’t want our bodies to be flabby, but we don’t mind our brains being flabby.

Subhanu: Yeah. And I think what modern neuroscience and psychology tells us is you stay active, you stay young, and the brain is the one of the most powerful organs we have. It’s there to be used and the more you use it, the more it flourishes.

Maureen: If we are thinking hateful negative stuff on a regular basis. It actually changes our physiology.

Subhanu: Yeah. And I think history has always had two opposing forces. One at the societal level, we are to some extent tribal. Okay. And which tends to separate. But at the [00:05:00] other level, researchers told us that children are innately compassionate in nature and playful, and we’ve all had the experience of the joy of just selfless giving to someone we love and the joy we get when we make someone else happy, who we care about.

So I think one of the challenges in leadership is how to overcome some of those societal pressures. We often say organizations divide, people collaborate. Because there is this innate, if you like, ocean of wellbeing and that compassion in all of us, we just have to unlock it. It’s not as if it’s something foreign to our nature.

It was there when we were born, but it gets covered over time.

Maureen: I like that idea that it is innately there. I’m not putting something in the container. In fact, I’m removing some of the. Debris that has collected .

Subhanu: Yeah. So the highest teachings in the Advaita tradition of Vedanta, the non dualism tradition is it says the path [00:06:00] to the truth is not to point it out, but it’s to remove misconceptions around it.

So taking away layers of ignorance and then the truth has always been there, ever present. You just haven’t noticed it. The example I give sometimes you’ll be driving to work. Yeah. And looking straight ahead and you may not have noticed a beautiful scenery to the side. That was always there.

You just never paid attention to it. So a lot of this journey is about helping you pay attention to the strength that’s already within you and those oceans and those wells of wellbeing that are there, and you just have to let them out.

Maureen: It’s a beautiful illustration that it is, again, this idea that I don’t have to.

Find and pour more stuff into my head. Kind of the Japanese tea ceremony. Yeah. That when the cup is full, the cup is full. It’s discovering the beautiful painted image on the bottom of the cup.

Subhanu: Absolutely. And, encapsulate this as a principle from the ancient Sanskrit [00:07:00] text of how to be outwardly, supremely active, yet inwardly, supremely inactive.

And that’s about realizing it’s about being versus doing. Okay. And getting people comfortable to being themselves. And this comes back to authentic leadership, where I think the goal of great leaders is to create a culture and an environment where you allow people to come to work as themselves and be themselves.

Now, to do that, you have to be authentic. You have to come to work as yourself. So how to create that, that self-awareness. To be authentic, to be vulnerable, humanize yourself as a leader

Maureen: in general. I love the idea of authenticity, and yet there are a few people I’ve come across who can be unkind

Subhanu: Yeah.

Maureen: And obnoxious at points in time.

Do we want them to be authentically unkind and obnoxious?

Subhanu: I have the view that you always want people to be who they are [00:08:00] because otherwise, how do you know how best to interact with them? And we come with enough masks in life. The word persona comes from the Latin through sound.

When actors would have a mask on and speak through a little hole where the sound would come and masks divide I’d rather know the person than not. And our experiences actually, we have a much more powerful way of connecting to people when we are who we are. Good, bad, or indifferent. So we had a wonderful, many years ago, a team leadership experience that I was quite skeptical about.

What was one of the most profound spiritual experiences I’ve ever had, where we did a team session with horses, oh, who were some of the most intuitive animals, 5,000 years of fight or flight response, attunes them to the en energy of a person. And our tasks were to get the horses to do things with us without a ring.

Okay. But to somehow connect with the inner energy of the horse by [00:09:00] standing with them. And the only way you could do it was to drop your guard, be who you are, whatever it was. Only then would the horse follow you. And I remember a couple of exercises that really stuck with me is I somehow found this amazing connection with a horse and was following me, and then I just turned to look at the horse and then.

The horse stopped and I kept walking and the trainer said, why did you do that? I said, I dunno. And he said, do you think you weren’t trusting that the horse would follow you? And I said, maybe. He said that, do you think the horse picked it up? So the horse picked up? I wasn’t trusting the horse.

So the ability to be yourself gives you the opportunity to connect whoever you are. And to be honest, if someone has those traits, you’d rather know them than not. So you know what you’re dealing with. And then you can help them.

Maureen: What if they’re doing damage until they get help?

Subhanu: Yeah. So my experience is people who [00:10:00] are of that nature are in pain or in fear.

Okay. Driven by some experience or some life event or some framing of them. And insecurity drives a lot of these actions. So part of it is how do you create that safe space? Or recognize that person just doesn’t fit into the environment that they’re in and they’re better off in another environment.

Often the tough job of leadership to say to someone, this is not working, but to understand why it’s not working, it could just be, it’s not a great fit for that person. And a sinner in one scenario could be a saint in another.

Maureen: Ah,

Subhanu: okay. And I think that’s an important thing not to lose by and large, unless you are inherently wired to be a psychopath.

People like to do good work. And if you look at most inter-office politics and situations, those people don’t come to work saying, I want to watch the world burn, to use the phrase from dark night. They wanna do a good job. They’re just not so ever being able to find that ability to do it in the environment that’s [00:11:00] created.

So I often ask myself, if someone is not performing first. It’s probably my fault. Have I set the person up for success? Have I played to their strengths?

Maureen: Okay.

Subhanu: Have I understood their real motivations or not? Have I created an environment where warring factions can work together on some transcendent goal?

Maureen: So a sense of purpose.

Subhanu: Purpose, exactly. Okay. And the great way to get people to collaborate is give them another enemy as an example, or another goal that transcends their petty individual goals. So I think a lot of onus goes on us as leaders to create that climate before writing someone off is disruptive.

And I’ve had experience of a couple of people that came across that, but realized that A, we were not playing to what they were good at.

Maureen: Okay.

Subhanu: And B, we were not setting it up for success because I created mutually opposing objectives with others.

Maureen: Ah.

Subhanu: So I inherently set up conflict. So we look at without the children who, who

Maureen: misbehave, and we often say the classroom’s structured improperly or [00:12:00] something.

Yeah. But with adults, we assume that they’re supposed to

Subhanu: figure it out somehow. And why should that be versus, we should ask ourselves, did we set it up for the right climate in the first place?

Maureen: So let’s go back to mindfulness then. So you, as a leader, you’ve mentioned you’ve had some of these situations.

How did mindfulness help you navigate? That situation.

Subhanu: I think one of the most powerful lessons I learned actually was from a German boss.

Maureen: Okay.

Subhanu: Who was a joke, oh, not a joke. A term of endearment. He’d call me Swami he’d say, Swami, before taking decisions, speak to five people. Okay? And what he meant by that is don’t just knee jerk react to the last thing you heard.

Spend the time to actually reflect, get input from multiple sources, and then make a decision. And I have to say. Those contemplative practices train you to not jump to the nearest decision or the last, on the last thing you heard. It’s a Malaysia society. People read the last [00:13:00] email as the gospel truth and then just react to it.

Versus have I got the full facts? Have I got the full picture? And there’s a very interesting turn in elitist journey where you get to a certain point in your career by being shown or showing that you are decisive, judgmental can react and get stuff done. Yeah. What do I look for when I create a board of directors?

I want people who are curious, who ask purposeful, probing questions. Who have a desire to understand. Who have a desire to listen more than speak. Those are very different skills and many people don’t realize those, but those can come from tho leaders who are very self-aware, liberated, who are contemplative in nature.

And I think at a certain point in many leaders’ journeys, they open themselves up to that. I wish we got to more leaders younger to show them this is actually gonna be important in your life journey and it’ll make you more effective as a leader.

Maureen: Much of my work has to do with developmental maturity.

Subhanu: Yeah.

Maureen: And as people go through, [00:14:00] steps in maturity, , they become more cognitively complex, more emotionally intelligent.

Their behaviors align more with their values, their time horizon becomes longer. And one of the. Activities that we look at to move through those levels consistently is a reflection practice. Absolutely. Whether it’s meditation or journaling or something that is, I’m exempt, I’m quieting the mind and I’m also opening myself up to reflect on what I did that I’m most proud of and what I did that I am.

In my case, horrified by what am I doing and how do I self-correct before getting erected?

Subhanu: And I think for those out there who may be a little scared of that being open with themselves and that vulnerability, I think there’s an important tool that’s available that helps a lot of folks, and that I [00:15:00] believe, strongly in is the access to a mentor or a coach in that journey.

To provide you with that contemplated space. And one of the bits of research that highly impacted me when I read about it is work that was done on underprivileged children in underprivileged societies. And the question was initially phrased as why do such children not succeed? No progress was made. And then someone had the idea to turn the question around to say in these difficult underprivileged societies, granted many don’t succeed, but there are some who do.

Let’s study why they succeed. And then some important findings came first, the how. Some of these kids were naturally optimistic and resilient, but they had access to a role model, okay? They had access to a mentor, some, and the way I define a mentor is someone who believes in you more than you believe in yourself.

And such mentors can be very tough with you. My grandfather, I call him as a mentor a couple of times. He made me [00:16:00] cry. But he would say, Hannu, you have an ability to change the world. And he instilled a belief in me that I didn’t see in myself. But having access to a coach or a mentor gives you that contemplative space, slightly external to the practices we are talking about.

Maureen: But can inculcate that joy of introspection so that, and the person can do it on their own. And often being able to be the mirror for somebody is something that as we develop leaders, we must develop and to be better coaches.

 Part of leading is inspiring those who follow me

Subhanu: and unleashing the gifts in others.

That’s what leadership should be about. And I’m lucky. I teach in my outside of work I teach Sanskrit and I’ve seen just the power of when you someone, the light bulb goes off. And so I try and bring that into the corporate sphere also. And recognize that. Every day is your chance to train yourself to be a better leader, better coach and so these are skills I think if [00:17:00] we can give to leaders, allow them to help bring others along the journey also.

Maureen: So I get the meditation, I train my mind. But then there’s this other part of. I have to reflect on and correct or adjust what I’m doing. Can you share a little bit about your practice in doing that?

Subhanu: There are a couple of things. One is when you give yourself time with yourself, and you say, this is the most risk-free zone I have. With myself. To really force yourself to say, what am I doing well and where am I falling short of the mark? And therefore to say, okay, where do I need help to change what I’m doing?

Maureen: And often as leaders, we’re not comfortable asking for that help.

Subhanu: We are not. And we, I know. That’s why this notion I talked about earlier of vulnerability, I think is a hallmark of a great leader. I have to say one thing that helped me maybe, and I [00:18:00]reflected on it when I think about the career planning, the careers that’s for others, is I had some very tough assignments early in my life.

And different ones. I never followed a linear career path. And I think having that exposure early in seeing that I could bounce back taught me that actually, throw yourself out for different experiences and it’s okay to be the stupid guy in the room. And actually not be afraid to ask the dumb question ’cause that’s how you learn.

And I think people that have had a very, shall we say, protected career trajectory or very protected upbringing, may be a little bit more reticent of opening themselves up to that, whereas those who’ve gone through immense adversity. So I had a, I have a very dear friend who had a near death car crash in his twenties, and he said it liberated him in his life and his career, said light short.

I’m gonna do what matters. And in, in, in work he would say, if something didn’t feel right, he’d just say no. ’cause he’d been to the age and he came back. And that I’m not [00:19:00] recommending everyone goes through those traumatic experiences, but it’s a lot of research that talks about how people who’ve had these difficult experiences.

Somehow have a more expansive, compassionate view of the world and of themselves and the ability to be more self-reflective and self-critical. And I think how do we engineer that in the business world is give people tough assignments early in life and show that you’ve got their back. Send them around the world, see the world.

I think the fact that early in our career, we went to live in Moscow, in Russia, had a wonderful experience. And it taught me that you have to ask a question when you do anything. What’s the worst case? And if the worst case isn’t gonna kill you or harm you, it’ll be a great learning experience.

And so when you have that mindset, then it’s all about gathering rich experiences.

Maureen: I’m hearing the word recently a lot. Grit. It gives us the grit or the tenacity. To deal with the things that are hard.

Subhanu: Yeah. And I think there’s an important point here to be [00:20:00] made, which is these practices.

It’s not about shying away from being sad or happy, but actually it’s about actually recognizing and being fully experiencing awareness to sadness. If you’re gonna live life’s gonna happen good and bad, but it’s about letting it happen on that ocean of wellbeing that’s within all of us. So these emotions, flit across the sky like a bird, like a trail of an airplane or something.

They come and they go. So it’s not about shutting yourself off from those emotions, but being actually fully present and aware of them and that somehow taps a much deeper experience of life and wellbeing that is much richer for it. So it’s not about just trying to be happy all the time, or sad, it’s about just being and letting these things come as waves through you and through those.

To just open up a, an even deeper, richer way of living.

Maureen: What a great way to end this segment is the idea that there is nothing to be avoided, but instead to embrace

Subhanu: life in all its [00:21:00] forms.

Maureen: I appreciate your sharing your wisdom with our listeners and with me.

Subhanu: It was my absolute pleasure. Thank you very much.

Maureen: Thank you. Hi, welcome Michelle Harrison. Thank you for having me. She is the global CEO of Cantor Public, the WPP Group, public Policy Consulting and Research Business. I. Michelle, why don’t you share a little bit of the conversation that we were having about women in business? .

Michelle: What I said to you, what I revealed was the reason why I can’t attend dinner tonight is I had thought that I would be on a very early train outta Brussels tomorrow morning in order to be back with my two younger children by mid-morning tomorrow.

My eldest son is now at university. And actually when I check the train timetable, the train that takes me back to where I need to get off doesn’t leave until the afternoon tomorrow, which means I don’t get home till mid-afternoon. And I guess what [00:22:00] I’ve just been saying to you is I have a an algorithm in my mind that I go through with regard to I suppose how much time I can, I can cope with being away from my family at the weekend and somewhere between 11 o’clock in the morning and three o’clock in the afternoon. Saturday is the point at which I feel I’m no longer going to have my weekend at home with my children and how important that is to me. And so I had just explained that.

I’m being extremely honest and the reason I can’t attend a dinner tonight is because I do want to be home with my kids before lunchtime tomorrow and in

Maureen: that app. So first, thank you for sharing that. And in the algorithm, we just read all of the countries in which you work? So I’m assuming you are away from your family, a great deal of

Michelle: time.

It varies. So part of what went into my mind when I was making that decision is I’m just about to go into a period of travel. So next week I’m overseas [00:23:00] for three days. The week after that, I’m overseas for three days. And then I do one of my very unusual long hauls when I’m actually away for nine days and I’m very rarely away at the weekend.

So it might have a period of travel coming up, which does mean a. I won’t be spending enough time with my kids, which makes this weekend particularly important. If I was going to be working from home for the next two or three weeks, or working outta London where I live for the next two or three weeks I would’ve made a different decision.

Maureen: So we also talked about as a global CEO, you don’t always get to be home when you want to. So the balancing with family and. The people for whom you have responsibility for their livelihoods.

Michelle: If you take on a leadership position in a business, then ultimately you are taking on responsibility for ensuring that business is thriving.

And if that business isn’t thriving, then they. Ultimately that leads to material damage to [00:24:00]shareholders and employees. We can be very glib about things like expressions, like work life balance, but what you actually have is a series of different responsibilities, and if you choose to take a leadership role, you must do that in full knowledge of your obligation.

To the business and all of the stakeholders in that business and to understand yourself, your own, the room you have for maneuver in also being able to fulfill your responsibilities and your needs to be with your family too. So I don’t think that’s something that only women or mothers experience.

I think that’s a challenge for people in leadership roles who are parents or people who in leadership roles, who have any for. Of community or family obligation, I think all of us would have those same difficult conversations in our own mind.

Maureen: In fact, I fly home and then two days later turning around and getting on another plane to see my [00:25:00] parents.

My dad is aging and my stepmom was gonna be traveling and one of my commitments. And it’s not an obligation, it’s a desire to be there to help rather than. Have someone who’s not family, helping my dad at a point in his life where you won’t always have hap. Yeah. So those commitments feel really important and honor to fulfill not an obligation.

Michelle: Yes, absolutely. And I think though where it’s important that we are honest, is these things are highly contextual. So they depend. On an enormous number of variables in terms of the circumstances of your home life at a particular moment in time. The arrangements you have in place can afford to have in place or have in place because you have familial support versus also where your business is at, or your business [00:26:00] responsibilities are at that particular moment in that organization’s, yeah, transition or growth, and so where your leadership team are in terms of their own experience and sophistication. So I think these things are highly contextual. And so when we when we talk about the trade-offs that people make, I think we have to view them as changing often according to the circumstances of the business or the organization they lead and the the situation they’re in at home.

For instance. You’re talking about a parent who needs you now, 10 years ago that may not have been an issue. . So highly contextual.

Maureen: This is just that point in life where I didn’t wanna outsource my parents. Yeah.

. To your point the support system and the context allows us to make different decisions.

Michelle: Yes. So I guess from a leadership point of view, we want to be able to provide an environment where people have the best [00:27:00] chance of being able to make the trade offs that are right for them at that time.

Yes. I think one of the other things we discussed. Before we started recording is that for many years in my career as a mother of three, I haven’t always been. Entirely open about the decisions I was making and that has come out not quite as I intended. I may not have said The reason I won’t be there is because I’m going to be at home, or I may not have talked very openly about the trade offs I felt I was making.

I would’ve made the same trade offs, but kept them to myself over the last few days actually listening to, there’s been a controversy on the radio as to why women haven’t spoken out about that particular situation at the moment in Hollywood. And I understand that. I understand why people who do not feel that they are in positions of power feel that they don’t have the positional power to say what’s going on. So in a very small [00:28:00] way. One thing that I can do is to talk openly about the challenges of parenting and leading from a business point of view, and I hope that makes it easy for other people to do the same.

Maureen: Thank you for your candor on that, because I have at times not spoken out more on the sexual harassments side.

Just tolerated, deflected, and tried to get my work done. Because I didn’t know if being honest would adversely impact my job with the client or my job with the firm.

Michelle: My guess is that if we had a hundred women in here right now and they were, over the age of 16 I, my guess is they would all say that if they were in an environment where they felt they could be ?,

Maureen: and I would love to see that change.

Michelle: My view is though, honestly, it’s about inclusive leadership [00:29:00] structures. So if I think about the experiences I may have had and why I would not have felt I could talk about them, that would’ve been to do with positional power. Once you have a situation in organizations of endless sort, where the positional power is not.

Held just by one particular group. Then so many of the things that we are discussing no longer exist. So it’s the inequality of who has traditionally held that position or power that makes it harder for another group that’s trying to gain access to it, to speak openly. Once you have fully inclusive boards that are, equally proportionate men, women, and equally proportionate in terms of other types of inclusivity too.

You remove those challenges to a very large degree, and there will always be. The abuse of positional power between Andra and [00:30:00] younger, senior and junior. But the issue of it being men versus women is easily removed by changing the power structures.

Maureen: Especially when we have options for people to be poor, that don’t reinforce the, it’s not safe for you to eat s and to take yours.

Michelle: Yeah. And I’m not at all cynical about that. I think options for reporting have existed for a long time. We still go back to the issue of why they’re not used, and it’s because people fear the consequences of speaking up. And so I think to truly remove the consequences of speaking up, you have to create organizations where men or women or anyone who caves in that way is not.

In any way viewed as normal. And I think that becomes I think we’re getting there. I think what we are getting there, we do, honestly,

Maureen: and I don’t mean to say that all the women can report to women [00:31:00] or, and it’s not an anti-male thing. No, it’s more of a cultural thing because I have female bosses and I, in some cases I wouldn’t have felt any safer reporting to them.

 I do wanna be clear that it’s not. Specifically a gender issue, but more a culture of deferring to authority. Yes,

Michelle: completely. And I have enormous sympathy for how difficult, challenging it must be for men who are having to the vast majority of men who will feel self-conscious about things they’d never, ever dream of participating in the vast majority of men.

So from that point of view, I also think we have to be. Very careful the other way.

Maureen: Yeah. That we’re not reverse Exactly. Engineer. Exactly.

Michelle: Yes. We’re talking about inclusivity, not exclusivity. Yeah.

Maureen: That’s, I think that’s a great point , in no way do I think we improve anyone’s situation by just shifting the outgroup to a different group.

Michelle: No, and I have two sons and a daughter, and when I [00:32:00] think about. What I want for them. So my daughter is now six or seven years away from entering the workforce and sometimes I feel quite depressed that she may enter a workforce where there is still a very real pay gap, gender-based pay gap. That just a.

That just appalls me. Why would my daughter earn less than my sons for anything she may do? I don’t love her less than I love my son. She isn’t less able than my sons. The flip side of that is. I also am very aware of what it must be like to be a young man going into the workplace and all of these extra things or burdens they can potentially carry because of not making them vulnerable to being accused of things as well.

So I think we must always move with caution, but the greatest way around this is inclusivity and leadership diversity. And inclusion in leadership is [00:33:00] so vital to make it easier as on, on us all. I

Maureen: wanna go back to something you said that strikes me. I know people talk about, I can’t say anything because that’s the political correctness, police and we don’t wanna go there.

And so inclusivity and a culture of transparency and fairness.

Michelle: Yes. Fairness and also. Not being too harsh on people unnecessarily. These things are such a matter of balance and caution. I’m aware that when you are in a role where you talk a lot and you talk a lot and you’re very tired and you wish to keep energy in a room and things come, you say things before you’ve necessarily connected with your brain.

I’m aware that if someone did a sort of. An analysis of my discourse over the course of a day. I am sure I say all kinds of things that if I read them written [00:34:00] down, I think, oh my goodness, I can’t believe I said that. That’s not an expression of what I believe. And I think that when we are looking at people who were in.

Positions of authority or met and coming from a point of view where they’re more likely to experience complaints. I do think we also need to be really cautious about when we call things out. I think being, I. Overly judgmental about language, things like that, that just, that do this with humanity and good sense, anyone is capable of saying the wrong thing.

That doesn’t mean they’re trying to damage someone’s career. And I think we need to be really cautious. The issues to do with sexual harassment. Don’t take us into a position where men feel they can’t talk. For being accused of things that they don’t really think or feel. And that’s possible and you do have to be cautious to keep that balance.

So I think that everyone to move forward with good grace and the presumption that people do wish to do the best things,

Maureen: I [00:35:00] do have clients you’ve said, I couldn’t ever say nice outfit or you look attractive today. ’cause they’re terrified of saying anything that will seem inappropriate.

And it does seem unfortunate that I could say to you, I love that green blouse. It looks great on you. And if a man said that the rules, the political correct rules say you can’t do that. So I think, in some places we have, to your point, not demonstrated grace and acts of kindness.

Michelle: So it’s a pendulum swinging, isn’t it? And I don’t blame people for being concerned about how those things may be heard. It’s not what always what they intended to say. It’s how things are heard. And I talk to my sons about this, because I want them to be. Careful and cautious.

I think that you get a pendulum swinging, so at the, sometimes you have to swing too far the other way in order to get us back to a good middle place. Again, it goes back to this issue of when we have diverse and inclusive [00:36:00] leadership in organizations, some of these things will no longer need to be discussed.

Maureen: And the flip side of that, when we have people who are different than us, we’re gonna make mistakes.

So to your point, it’s the reason I don’t record live. I need to be able to edit ’cause I say things that don’t come out of the, my mouth, the way I intended.

Michelle: Oh, abso, oh I think I do this several times a day.

 And already as we’ve done this interview, and I hope this is a bit that you don’t edit out, already as we’ve done this interview. I have felt that I’ve expressed myself inappropriately on a couple of occasions and I said things where I was speaking before.

I really knew quite how I’d have finished my sentence and I already understand I’ve done that. It is a constant and also what will happen for someone in the kind of role, you or we are often finding ourselves, having conversations with people we don’t know or people. I’m very fortunate because I work in such a global environment, so I have the enormous pleasure of meeting people all the time [00:37:00]from different parts of the world, and it is one of the greatest pleasures of my job.

But equally, it’s also when I can be very challenged through my own pure lack of knowledge and ignorance. I sat next to a wonderful young woman at dinner a few nights ago who was from Vietnam, and I had just been watching a documentary series and at home in London about the Vietnam War, and I raised this in conversation, and as I did it, I realized.

I simply did not have enough knowledge culturally to know whether or not this was something that she would want to talk about. As a European, I understand those sensitivities across Europe and even to some extent in the us but I, I was immediately ’cause I, I don’t know Vietnam I immediately realized that.

So I, I think yeah, I think we should judge people. It’s like when we do research, we look for evidence from many different areas. When we are putting together data sets for governments to base their public policy [00:38:00] decisions on, we triangulate, we look at a problem from many different angles, and I think I.

I guess my final point would be on this issue of of leadership and how we evaluate people. We must evaluate ’em from many different areas and allow people the chance to illustrate their true integrity and ethics over more than what conversation .

Maureen: It sounds like going to intent.

Yeah, and we all make mistakes. As much as I engage in some of the political banter, I’m so grateful that I am not in that role of people scrutinizing everything I say, because out of context, some very high percentage of what I say could be made to sound mean-spirited or ridiculous. All uninformed.

And I hope we’re not as leaders, we’re all at risk of that. Yeah. And it seems like the [00:39:00] biggest antidote is to create an environment of, the word I love is grace.

Michelle: Yes. That’s a nice word. We do need to be gracious. Yeah.

Maureen: With one another and with ourselves. ’cause as you said, I hear myself and I wish I could reel back in what I’ve said I do as well.

And as soon as I get on that cycle, I. I inhibit my ability to. Be present.

Michelle: Yes. And actually yeah, I think in all areas of leadership I make mistakes all the time. Probably daily, I work on the basis of if four outta five of the decisions I make are the right decisions, we are moving forward.

And what I hope is the ones, the decisions I’ve made that are wrong. Are not fatal to us.

Maureen: It’s

Michelle: rationally. Yes. And my job is to constantly reevaluate and actually decisions are just poor decisions are [00:40:00] generally decisions that we are yet to just improve on. But we have to go forward at pace and we have to understand that leadership, all of us make poor decisions.

Regularly we say things that have been poorly constructed regularly. I will sometimes go home at night. Regretting what I may I. Have said to a colleague, not because of my intention, but how the phrasing of it may have given the wrong impression, and I’m sad that my words may have made someone else feel sad.

So I think I’m, I learned to forgive myself a bit more for those mistakes I learned to understand, to judge people on the basis of a series of behaviors, not single incidents,

Maureen: which is so critical in an environment where many people are afraid. To do anything for risk of being fired.

Michelle: Yeah. I, and I can’t bear that.

I can’t bear that. If you’ve put someone [00:41:00] especially with a senior team, if you’ve put someone into a position because you can see what their talent is. And honestly, the single best thing to do is to let them be the best they can be and get out of their way. And if they make an odd decision, which is not the one you would’ve made, say what?

As long as it doesn’t. Yeah, of course. And then that needs to go all the way through the organization all the way down. Our junior people coming in can quickly be able to feel that they have the opportunity to be the trusted advisor in some conversations,

thank you so much.